The Daily {W}rite Novmber wk o2

Wednesday,

I need to get out, make new friends to replace the ones I just 86ed from my personal life. Yeah, I know. I'll make some new friends, laugh with them, hang with them a while and then . . . BLAM! all that devoted friendship will explode into another volley of emotional shrapnel. And I'll fall back into my dark apartment lock the door, disconnect the phone and just crawl up onto the couch and  . . . watch TV for a month, two months, three . . . maybe six. Now and then I'll peek between the Venetian blinds every now and then . . . just making sure the world hasn't disappeared  while I wasn't looking. Maybe I shouldn't even bother. Maybe I'm suppose to be without friends. I wouldn't be the first or the last man to ever find himself totally alone  . . . nothing but the quiet reflection of my  memories for company.

Life is Short

I don't know if I have a soul

but if I do I think it sleeps so deep
inside my head and heart
that nothing can awake it.

I wonder too about heaven

and hell and night and day,
I wonder as I wander free
to think about such silly things.

My neighbors tell me

life is short too short to dally,
too meaningful to take for granted
too precious to waste.

I believe them when they say such things

even though I know (I think I know) that life,
this little life is but a blink, and I am nothing
but a wink away from being freed of it.

Woodie o7-14-17 (rewrites 11-o8-17)

Thursday, November 1o, 2o17 11pm
A poem from a collection of short poems I'm actively working on right now. Well, okay, NOT right now but I'm working on them.

Beyond sight, beyond the fragile veil 

where thought haunts consciousness.

That's where my Self lives, forever 

perplexed by its own existence.

One day a child, the next an old man

who can barely remember his own name.

Asphalt roads, the wooded trail

where autumn leaves go to die

at the hands of solemn crows,

the memories gather 'round

an empty grave so dark, so black

the bottom can't be seen,

that's where I live most days, these days. 

Staring at the reflection

hovering in the window glass,

trying desperately to remember

what the hell I look like.

Woodie 11-1o-17

Friday, November 1o, 2017  11:58pm

Today is the Marine Corps birthday, 242 years old. Chesty Puller the most decorated Marine in the corps once said, "You're not really a Marine until you spend time in the brig." Yes, for all its Semper-fi attitude at the heart of every Marine is a deep seated desire to say FUCK YOU! to everybody including (and especially) anybody that was NOT

an enlisted man. Chesty was also THE MARINE because he entered the Corps as a private and left it as a fuckin' Lieutenant General! Yeah, Chesty was the man of men!

1968. I was getting short. No more than maybe three months before I would be headed stateside. One of the grunts doing pot shack duty showed me a picture in the Stars & Stripes of some very, very old dude with this young, wide-eye kid. "That's Chesty Puller!" the grunt said with the exuberance usually reserved for that poster of Brigitte Bardot sitting on a Harley. "Which one?" "The old guy, dude! The young guy's his son. He just enlisted in the Corps and is here in Vietnam!" Yep, that's what the article said, sure enough. I went back to the picture and wondered at it. Chesty, my main man, the Marine Corps' green god was beyond old. There's a saying that someone looks like, "death warmed over." But this old dude was beyond that. I'm not even sure he was alive, just a shriveled up piece of dead meat that someone put a suit on and propped up for a party pic. And the kid next to him, his son, that wide-eye look in his eyes wasn't from wonder; it was fear. Straight up fear. And he should be afraid. I mean, do you want to be in a war zone where everybody knows Chesty Puller is your dad? Not everybody liked Chesty Puller. He was a general. Yeah, he made his way through the rants to get to general  . . . but people don't give a shit about that. You give up your right's as a human being when you become an officer. And at the time "fraggin'" an officer was a fad. A guys resting in his tent, and he hears something rolling on the floor, looks down and Pop! No more officer. One guy with a grudge against Chesty, one hand grenade tossed into his hooch and young Captain Puller would be no more. But that didn't happen to Lewis Burwell Puller Jr. Something more horrible was waiting for him.

The Daily {W}rite November wk o1

Wednesday
Yeah, been over five months since I tried to breathe a little life into this diary-blog. Too busy aging to take the time to try and write something, anything that I can use

to point out to folks . . . I'm still relatively  . . . alive. I'm semi able to breathe with the help of a nebulizer, a rescue inhaler and coffee, lots and lots of dark roasted coffee. I haven't felt like writing much of anything, hell, I haven't written a movie review in so long. I have "tried" to write some poetry but it hasn't amounted to much. The Muse has left the building . . . the Earth. So, I struggle on. I continue (or start) to write, to say something so profound that all well praise me honor me . . . or at the least . . . just forget how much they've always adored beating me.

I suppose I'm just too sensitive. Or maybe it's that I'm not sensitive enough when it comes to others feelings, moods, disappointments. Hmm. I do believe I've written a poem about that. Want to read it? Too late, you should have spoke up sooner. Now you have to read it:

'tis true

'tis true, 'tis true,

I am by nature an impatient man

demanding of my dreams, "show thyself!"

long before I’ve fallen off to sleepy-land!

I often sit a twiddling my thumbs

at an extremely agitated rate

or pace the floor and adjust my coat

while filling the air with unquotable quotes

when she decides to keep my spirits waiting.

What’s with all this hesitating?

She doesn’t see my agitation?

Can't she hear my mournful cries

belittling the darkest nights

while longing for her presence to arrive?

'tis true, 'tis true,

mere blasphemy, some would say,

my cursing her and scorning her then all the day

hoping soon she'll smile my way.

But I'm a complicated sort of guy

who doesn't always try to reason why,

why this old world spins perpetually slower

when it comes to my desires.

Maybe I should retire from it all

with'a swift slit to the wrist!

No, that would be quite painful and harmful

to all those friends . . . who pretend to like me.

"tis true, 'tis all true,

I love my misery far too much to give it up.

A dark, dank grave with no one to mourn

except those featherless crows, who heaven knows,

have forgotten the meaning of flight? No, not I!

But I have lost my train of thought. Where was I?

Perhaps I should take my dog for a walk

and clear this morbid rhyme from my mind.

Yes! I could walk my dog . . .  if I had one.

Woodie o5-23-08

That's all for tonight. With luck I'll have enough inspiration to pick it up tomorrow. Goodnight.

Friday, November o3, 2o17, 2:14am

Thursday was  . . . I hate to say a good day, but yeah, a good day. I feel a bit more liberated from my past and my present . . . the future? Seriously, it is so uninteresting to me that I don't ever think about what might or might not be for me. I've cut all ties to the weight that was dragging me down, the thoughts that keep me locked up in my apartment sleeping all day and staying up all night. I am free. For now. yeah, I have no illusion. That light at the end of a darker than dark corridor is as much a trick of the mind as my lying past . . . I'm only a misstep away from total mind destruction. But no worrying about it because my whole life, from the very first day of breath I have been close to the end of all thinking, all reasoning, all laughter and tears.

Back to Thursday: Crawled out of the darkness of sleep . . . slowly. A snail's awakening, deliberately slow. But a few cups of coffee, a good stretch of the body, ten minutes worth of hits off the nebulizer and I was awake, aware that from this moment on I am alone. Got dressed fast, got the bike out and rode over to Spout's, bought some ready baked chicken and stopped by the landlord's mansion, slipped the rent into his mail box. And back home in enough time to watch the news. The News! On these good days the news doesn't bother me, Trump's antics didn't do anything except make me laugh at his stupidity. What a joke he is. Anyway, there are decisions I need to make about Friday. Maybe go catch the new Thor movie? Do have to go to Walmart for nicotine gum and a few groceries., and it's going to be cold later on today so I may just wait the movie for Saturday. But right now? I'm enjoying the freedom of being alone, totally alone like a single star shinning through the storm clouds. :)
4:00pm

And I'm off to Walmart for nicotine gum and maybe . . . a movie! Heard that Stranger Things is out on video. I hope so. Really want to watch that. So, if I don't  have a deadly bike accident and/or a heart attack, I 'll be back in a couple hours.

11:11pm
Damn. 2.2 miles to Walmart from my apartment. The directions say it should take 13 minutes to get there. Not me. On the way up, I got to 12th St. from Boyd Ave, and had to stop, take a few drags off the inhaler, and wait for me to catch my breath before jumping on the bike and finally getting to Walmart. The way back it was even harder. Stopped three times just to breathe! Round trip, according to the Google map, 26 minutes. My time? Well, I left home at 4pm, shopped for about 45 minutes (long checkout lines that time of day), and finally got home at 6pm. Man! My lungs were burning up and my legs were shaking so bad I couldn't stand up long enough to put my groceries away. So sad. I use to ride like the wind on the bicycle, I loved breathing hard, sweating like hell . . . but moving, moving so fast! Now? Well, I guess I just gotta work up to it. I need to take it easy but make sure I get out and ride every day.

Saturday, November o4, 2o17

Frayed at all ends. My eyes opened at 8:30am, closed and reopened about 12:35pm. Dragged myself off the couch . . . barely. The coffee was cold. I turned on it's heating unit . . . BEEP . . . BEEP . . . BEEP . . . tapped the remote, turn on the TV . . . the news plays softly as I reacquaint myself with the half of a dream I left sitting in the darkness. 12:45am. Yeah, I got to get up. The lungs are aching. Pull out the nebulizer, connect the pieces of the mouth piece and loud it up with . . . what ever that crap is the doctor tells me I gotta suck into my lungs four times a day.

By 2pm I've brushed my teeth, drank two cups of almost warm coffee, tucked in the partial plate, one chewable baby aspirin for the heart and a Gummy Bear fiber supplement for . . . well, you know! And  . . . that's my whole day. Didn't go riding like I should, didn't ride over and see the game at one of the local bar/restaurants in town . . . didn't leave the house once. So, how was your day?

Sunday, November o5, 2o17
I hope I'm not betraying my generation by saying how much I enjoy my coffee/reading time at the Starbucks on the corner of Boyd and Asp. I know, it's a chain and corporate chains of anything service is EVIL! And I'm with you. I don't want to live in the United States of Starbucks or Walmart. I really don't . . . but Starbucks has the best coffee in town and a very, very comfortable lounge chair for me to sit in and read. Plus, the staff at spells my name right on my medium Americano cup: Woodie and not WOODY!

I didn't ride as far today as I intended. Seriously, the run to Walmart knocked the stuffing out of my lungs and my legs. All day yesterday I felt like a ragdoll . . . an old ragdoll. And that bothers me a lot. Yeah, I know, I'm old and getting old . . . er. I gotta expect that I'll have to slow down a bit. But nature could at the least give my the ability to ride my damn bicycle since I don't have any other personal transportation. And yes, I know, I have to take it slow getting back on the bike after almost a year never riding it. So, I am resolved to go farther and get faster on the bike but . . . I gotta work up to it. So, every day a short ride, maybe just a few blocks, until I'm ready physically and mentally to try a Walmart run again. I can catch a bus up to Walmart and back home, and I'll do just that for a bit, until I can make there and back on the bike without feeling that I'm gonna a die afterward. :)

Monday, November o6, 2o17, 10:19pm

Crawled out of unconsciousness around 10:30 this morning to find that all the leaves on the oaks out front had turned a golden-yellow. Winter attacked like an invisible monster, killing every bit of warmth the world had known only twenty-four hours ago. Cut off jeans, short- sleeved tees, all buried somewhere in the back of a dark closet, replaced with long, heavy coats and gloves and silly looking stocking caps with fuzzy balls of yarn sewn to their tops. Old men frown all the time no matter what the weather . . . but today? An extra crease appears at the corner of my mouth as I realize it will never be warm again. 

Of course, I exaggerate. A tiny bit. There's always the chance that the old . . . er folks may not make it all the way through the Oklahoma winter although the weather "woman" says that this will be a very mild winter and little if any snow. So, we, me and my fellow gray wolves, make it to another spring  . . . only to be killed off, weeded out by the harsh oven eye of summer. Yes, we die, we old folks, due to either cold weather or hot. Nature's way of thinning the herd, I guess.